For many years, the technology of fire extinguishants was directed to extinguishing a fire rapidly without any regard to whether the products generated in extinguishing the fire were toxic to humans or damaging to the environment.
There have been no significant improvements in the development of fire extinguishants during the past twenty-five years. However, during the interim, there has been a systematic and progressive ban on the continued use of effective widely used extinguishing agents such as carbontetrachloride and Halon 2402. These substances have been demonstrated to have immediate toxic effects. It is expected that additional regulations will be enacted in future to control the negative environmental impact of the few effective fire extinguishants that are still approved. No fire extinguishants exist or are in use at the present time that are effective, and yet clean, nontoxic, nonhazardous, noncorrosive, and generally environmentally safe.
Derek A. Thacker has conducted research into developing effective fire extinguishing and fire retarding agents including developing fire extinguishants which have non-toxic qualities. D. A. Thacker is the inventor identified in U.S. Pat. Application Ser. No. 003,445, filed Jan. 15, 1987, for a fire extinguishant (counterpart Canadian Application Ser. No. 527,276, filed Jan. 13, 1987) and co-pending U.S. Patent Application Ser. No. 112,459, filed Oct. 26, 1987 for a fire retardant composition (Canadian counterpart Application Ser. No. 550,274, filed Oct. 26, 1987).